Thursday, July 29, 2010

The first order of the weekend was the RedBull Flugtag on the Mississippi River in St. Paul. For those who don't know, it's a contest in which home made, human-powered flying machines get launched off a 30' high platform over water. Some flop, some drift down, and one flew. We got to see Major Trouble and the Dirty Dixies (the pic that looks like a WWII bomber) break the all-time world record with a flight of 207 feet. Luckily, it was well witnessed as the party down on the river was 90,000 people strong.

After Flugtag, Dennis and I headed down to the Verm for a fun evening run. The features seem to change every time I've been there this year, and this trip was no different. There was wave surfing in Triple Drop, fast and bouncy spins in Railroad, great blasts in S-turn, and a crazy day down in Donut.

To add to the fun, we ran into Mike L down there, who I hadn't seen since Sturgeon more than a year ago. He was ripping the hole up and it was great to see him again.

On Sunday, there was no time wasted getting back to the fun stuff. We headed out to Corcoran for the Muddy Sunday volleyball tournament. Yup, it's about like it sounds. Lots of mud with lots people diving around in it. Our team did well, coming 4th out of 40 teams. The problem is that by winning we had to keep playing - over 20 games in about 7 hours. By the end we were filthy and exhausted but had an awesome day. Definitely going back next year. These are the before and after pics, plus one of the tug-of-war contest.